Paper Clouds
by daschund
Summary: Finnily's gone and said some things that probably should have gone unsaid, but there's no taking back words. AU, Fem!Finn, Finn/Harv, fluffiness.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Okay. This was inspired by...a lot of things. First off, the way that Finn answered a question over that the WU formspring - sort of by the story Once Upon a Dream by anihyrmoonstar - and a big part by a certain huge list of songs, which will be supplied if anybody's interested (:

So this thing's in three parts, doesn't have too much of a point and it's unedited...but I hope you enjoy it anyway! :D

Words (total): 8,093

Warnings: HarvxFinn, fem!Finn, slight AU.

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><p>Sometimes, Harv actually wanted to get out of bed and go to school. This was <em>not <em>one of those days.

_It was an endless dance that they were in; he would lunge for her and she would spin away, laughing as though she knew how much he loved her laugh. _

Even with Big and Puck crawling over him and yelling (or not, in Big's case, Big didn't yell much, and Puck did enough of that for the both of them) Harv was content to stay where he was and try to snatch at the wonderful wisps of dreams that were quickly fading.

"HAARV!" Screamed Puck in his ear, grabbing a fistful of the oldest brother's hair and tugging at it. "Get up! Help me get Big!"

Harv swatted at Puck. "G'way," he muttered unhappily. He hated having to share the straw mattress with his younger brothers, but didn't think that the situation was going to be changed anytime soon.

The eight-year-old avoided the swipe and tugged at Harv's hair again. "Haaaarvey," He whined loudly. "Haaaarvey!"

"Fine!" Snapped Harv, sitting up abruptly and dislodging the child from his hair. He struggled out of the blanket and stomped across the 'bedroom', swiping up Big from their parents' straw mattress and dropping him roughly beside Puck.

It was way too early to be out of bed. He just wanted to go back to sleep and get those dreams back.

_She'd flip her hair over her should as if she knew that Harv loved how soft and wavy and long it was, and made him pause, reach out for her hair. It had continued like that for a while, in the middle of the dreamscape of blue-black sky and silken ground._

Well…not the entire dream. Just parts of it, different parts of the different dreams. Only the parts that involved Finnily.

—but not like _that_. Even if a fair few of _that _sort of thing had crept into his subconscious, it didn't mean that he wanted to continue dreaming those parts of those dreams, because Finnily was his best friend. She'd never think of him as anything more. Ever. And he had to accept that and move on already.

(But that didn't mean that the dreams weren't nice while they _lasted_, he just wasn't wishing back those parts during the day.)

Ahem. Anyway. Harv blushed furiously, ducking his head as he moved through the kitchen area to the front door, in order to avoid his moms questioning gaze. He muttered a hello to her and ignored her—well, pretended not to hear her, but that was still ignoring—when she asked him to get down the salt for her please, honestly, why did their father insist on storing it so high up like that?

He really wished that those thoughts of Finnily would just get out of his head already. He kind of felt the need to bang his head against a wall, constantly, in order to clear those thoughts away.

Harv continually told himself it was for his own good, because Finnily would never return any sort of romantic interest, and it'd be better to just keep thinking of her as his best friend; only bad would come out of thinking about her in other ways.

But part of Harv didn't believe himself.

_Then, Finnily had spun away and appeared behind him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and resting her jaw on shoulder, where it met his neck, and breathed softly on the skin there, making him freeze as chills ran up and down his body._

Harv had no idea how he was going to deal with school today—it would be a nightmare. He didn't quite know what he'd do while 'hanging out' with Finnily that afternoon, either; he had a feeling it'd be a tad hard to go on as they normally did.

_His dreams always went like this. This was the part when he always woke up. This was the part where he turned around, slowly, and dared to put his arms around her waist, the part there noses nearly brushed, the part where he was so close to her—the part just when he woke up._

He hurried away from the house, towards the well, to get himself a drink of water before facing the day. When he got the watering hole, he leaned over the edge and caught a glimpse of his face in the shadowed water way down below.

Dreams were stupid, he decided with a snort. The reflection of his red face didn't agree, though.

There was a cloud overhead that was starting to look like a duck. Harv frowned deeply at it.

He'd been having strange dreams lately, which involved a duck and Finnily and her purple dress, but it wasn't the dress that was the problem; it was the duck that continued to tell him to embrace his inner desires.

He was kind of afraid that those desires involved his best female friend, but he didn't want to think about that, now or ever, because it was never going to happen. (He knew this for sure.)

He rolled onto his stomach so that he wouldn't have to see the duck shaped cloud any longer, gave a gusty sigh and watched the helpless blades of grass bend under the force.

An odd moment of insight came to Harv. Blades of grass were so tiny and insignificant, helpless, nearly useless, and so numerous. They were so resistant, being stepped on all the time, but always stood straight anyway. He wondered if being compared to a blade of grass would be a good or bad thing—probably good.

It felt very quiet. Too quite. It wasn't normal for him to have a moment like this, alone, away from his siblings and without Finnily. For some reason, it made him nervous, like something was going to pop out at him at any moment—Puck or Big, or the phsycopathic unicorn or—

"HARV!"

"AUUGH!" He let out a strangled yell, and had hauled himself to his feet within moments, only to find himself facing an extremely annoyed Finnily.

"God," she sighed, arms crossed. "You are _deaf_!"

He gave her an odd look and followed her with his eyes as she tossed herself down onto the grass beside where'd just been lying. Her blonde waves of hair sprawled out behind her head, pillowing between it and the grass; her arms flopped down at angles to her body. After tossing himself down as well, he asked, "What's your problem today?"

"What's _my _problem?" she snapped. "What's _your _problem?"

"I don't have a problem," he replied, a grumble. "Seriously, is something wrong?"

"No," Finn grouched. "Everything's just fine and dandy."

"Why'd you come over if you're gunna be like this?"

There was a long stretch of silence, then, in which the duck-shaped-cloud inched across the sky as though it had nothing better to do. In Harv's opinion, it could go ahead and evaporate already. The wind tugged at it bit by bit as it moved sluggishly along, yanking it out of shape little by little, and this was just fine with Harv.

He wouldn't have minded sitting in silence and watching the duck-cloud become deformed, thinking nothing, for a long time, but of course Finn spoke up and broke it; she'd never been good at meditation and the like, anyway.

"What I don't understand," she said loudly, causing Harv to glance her way. She was glaring at the sky like it had personally offended her. "Is why my mother is _so _intent on my learning witchcraft. I mean, _hell_-o, I don't want to get burned at the stakes!"

_Oh, _thought Harv, wincing a little. _So that's what that was all about. _

She went on like that, ranting and complaining about the stupid green-skinned witches that always were on the edge of their land, and had once poisoned her mother and stolen her invisible flying disk, and then admitted that okay, the invisible flying disk _was _pretty cool, way cooler than a broom, at least, and the tricky illusions _were _pretty neat, but she didn't want to be hated, she wanted to be liked and not feared and why didn't her mother _get _that?

Harv, unfortunately, didn't have anything at all to add to the conversation—hah, could it even be called a conversation?—so he listened, or tried to, to her going on about it all.

"—expected of me, since mother's one, you know, and all of her sisters too, my aunts, but that's totally unfair—"

Finnily was really pretty when she was mad. Her cheeks got flushed and her body language became excessive, but…it was cute.

Harv promptly pushed that thought from his mind. _Not going to happen_, he reminded himself. _Ever. And besides, she's my __best friend_.

"—to do _other _things, like perfect my harp playing and maybe sing a bit better! But it's not like I'd ever want to do silly domestic tasks like _sewing _or _cooking _or something, besides, I'm rubbish at both—"

Harv could agree with Finn's point on cooking, not like he'd say it to her face. But she _had _agreed that of the two of them, his cooking was better. He did help his mom a lot with that, didn't he? And took care of his brothers a lot—if he ever had kids, he'd probably be the one taking care of them, mostly, and an image of himself and Finnily taking care of a little todder was promptly pushed from his mind, where did it get these ideas from?

"—don't care if it seems shallow, either, but I should be allowed to be sort of shallow about this, you know! As if I'd ever _really _be shallow, though, because, well. Obviously, I'm _not_, but anyway, it's alright to be like that about being liked and further, about dying—you know the punishment for practicing witchcraft! Mother only gets away with it because everyone's afraid of her, and she turned that one knight into a frog—"

"She WHAT?" Yelped Harv. "She turned someone into a frog?"

Finnily scowled. "Well, he deserved it! Anyway, that's not my point—"

The cloud that had looked like a duck was starting to become deformed. Good. Sudden, a hand obstructed his view of the sky and then there was a sharp pain in his nose.

Harv scowled and snatched Finnily's wrist from the air; she hadn't even realized she'd hit him, had she? He sat up quickly and pinned her hand down, and then the other, leaning over her, glaring.

"What are you—" Finnily asked; her teeth clicked together at the end of the word, he jaw clenching shut; her purple eyes were round.

"You hit me," he declared, giving her a sort of suspicious look.

"Sorry," she squeaked. "That doesn't mean you have to—"

Harv gave a bit of a sigh. "Look, Finn," he said to her. "If I let you up, you're probably going to end up smacking me again, with how much you're waving your arms."

She started to protest, but Harv didn't want to hear it: "I know you're upset about the witchcraft thing, but it'll be okay, won't it? Your mom won't force you into anything, and as far as I know, you're not going to be letting anybody tell you what to do for a while yet. So…you don't have to worry so much."

"I…" She blinked at him, and gave him a small smile. "…thank you."

It was Harv's turn to blink, now. "Did you just thank me?"

Finnily snorted and tugged her hands, trying to free them from the grip of Harv's fingers. She avoided his eyes when she asked, "Suddenly, saying thank you is so out of character for me?"

"I can count all the times you've said it to me and meant it on one hand," Said Harv dryly, and noting her attempts of struggles, realized their position. A blush lit his cheeks and he sat back hurriedly, snatching back his hands as though Finnily were suddenly on fire. She followed him up, keeping their faces about the same distance apart as before.

"You're still going to that Warrior University place," she stated, changing the subject. "To become…a knight?"

"That's right," Harv replied, feeling a tad awkward and a little upended by the change of topic. "What—"

"I wish I could go to," She sighed, "being a bard sounds pretty neat."

"Doesn't that—"

"Harv, you have to graduate with good grades and become a knight for me."

She said this completely seriously, looking straight at Harv. He felt the sudden need to gulp, but fought it; he said, "That's what I was planning to do. Why's it suddenly for _you_—?"

"You know," the girl interrupted him and stood swiftly, brushing bits of grass from her purple dress and the tops of her boots for a moment after the first two words, before continuing, "Ladies don't marry down."

He gave her a confused look. She snorted.

"And?"

"And that's why you have to become a knight, Harvey."

"I don't—"

But she was gone, trotting off towards the dusty road which lead towards the forest in which her home was located, leaving Harv sitting atop the hill and blushing, wondering if his best friend had been serious just then, because, surely, she hadn't been suggesting they get _married _in the future.

He flopped backwards. The cloud still looked like a duck, albeit a deformed one.

"Rhodri!" Yelped Harv when he came across his younger brother behind the grain field (and behind a little hill, was he sitting in front of a _hole_?). The younger boy quickly hid a shiny _something _behind his back, but not fast enough; Harv had already seen the object.

"Nothing!" Yelled Rhodri, which, honestly, just made him seem even guiltier than he already did.

"Was that a—?" Harv stomped towards his younger brother, frowning. "Who'd you steal that from?"

"No one! I didn't steal anything!" the dirt-smudged younger boy glared up at his brother, a contest that Harv wouldn't let him win. After several minutes of staring, Harv attempted a lunge around his younger sibling, grabbing at the object; this failed the first attempt, but after several long minutes of struggling, Harv came out victorious. He held in his hand a necklace with a huge diamond as a pendant.

He tightened his fingers around it as he held it above his head, out of the twelve-year-old's reach.

"Give that back!" protested Rhodri. "It was gift!"

"Who'd you steal it from?" Harv demanded, ignoring Rhodri when he continued to insist it was a given to him fairly. Because, really. Who would _willingly _give _Rhodri _a diamond necklace? Those were expensive and rare!

"Nobody! I already told you, it was _given _to me," Rhodri stuck out his tongue at his older brother, and lunged for the necklace again.

"I'll give to mom and she'll take it to town!" Harv threatened. "Or I'll take it there myself! I can give it to the Headmaster, and he'll figure out whose it is!"

"No!" yelped Rhodri. "Give't _back_!"

Harv hoisted the jewels higher in the air. Rhodri went back to glaring at him, a favor which Harv promptly returned.

"Give't _back_," repeated Rhodri, trailing off into a whine. "I w's planning on givin' it to Finnily!"

At this, Harv froze. "What?"

"You heard me!" Rhodri stomped his foot. "Now give it back!"

"Why would I do that!" cried Harv, now clutching the jewel to his chest. Since he was confident the thing was a stolen object, he didn't necessarily want to hang onto it, but he couldn't give it back to his younger brother, either—he was planning to give it to _Finnily_?

It was so incredibly un-Rhodri-like.

And plus, Finnily was _his_, as much as it embarrassed him. Their last conversation had been halting and awkward, much to the female's confusion, and Harv didn't really know how to refer to her anymore—since the conversation that had gone down nearly a week ago now—but still, _his_. Rhodri couldn't give her expensive, shiny jewels. That wasn't right, and it wasn't _fair_.

But this course of action was so uncharacteristic of Rhodri…something _had _to be up.

Harv gave Rhodri a suspicious look.

"You can't give this to Finnily," said Harv slowly. Then he quickly stumbled over his words and added, "It's stolen! She won't accept something that was stolen!"

Rhodri snorted, scuffed his bare heel against the long grass and then dug his toes into the soil. "You don't know that."

"Yes, I do. She's my—" He cut himself off, paused. He wasn't sure what she was anymore. "—best friend," He finished with the safest route. "I know her much better than you do."

Rhodri raised an eyebrow at Harv, not believing him, somehow. "…what was that, just now?" He asked slowly.

"N-nothing!" It was Harv's turn to deny the obvious. Thankfully, Rhodri didn't press it; instead, he took the chance of Harv being off guard to attack him and wrestle the diamond necklace away from him.

Harv put up a good fight, but in the end Rhodri pried the jewel out of his fingers and fled into the grain field, leaving Harv to glare at the waving stalks.


	2. Chapter 2

Finnily held the necklace delicately in her cupped hands, and then stared at Rhodri with a slightly slack jaw.

"Uh." She said. "…okay?"

He grinned at her, the gap in his front teeth extremely obvious. "What do you think?" He asked.

"It's, um. Really big. And shiny. Are you really giving it to me?"

Rhodri scuffed his heel against the dirt path. He'd managed to catch Finnily in the forest, on the path to town the afternoon following Harv's discovery of the diamond. And now that Harv thought he was giving it to Finnily, it seemed to be his only next logical course of action.

Part of him really wanted to impress the purple-eyed girl with the jewel, but the other part of him wanted to keep the loot to himself. Then again, he did have half of Emet's future treasure coming his way, so, what of one diamond? He'd have a lot more, soon. One measly diamond necklace wouldn't make a single dent.

(Or so he told himself.)

Finnily's disbelieving face, all round eyes framed in lazy blonde curls, was worth the diamond. So he nodded readily.

Her next words, however, were not. "Um. No thanks."

"What?" Yelped Rhodri. That…was not what he'd been expecting.

From the bushes, Harv grinned, just a teeny tiny bit.

Rhodri glared at her, and snatched the necklace back. He shoved it into his pocket, along with his hand, and the stared up at her. "You only didn't want it because I'm not Harv," He told her.

She blinked, her cheeks going just a _tiny _bit pink. "What are you talking ab—"

Rhodri snorted. "I knew it! You're in _loooove _with him, aren't you?"

"I'm not!" she yelped, and her face was defiantly pink now. "What gave you that idea?" she knocked him on the top of the head with her fist (it couldn't have hurt much, if at all.) "I just don't want your stinky jewelry!" She turned around, and crossing her arms, stopped off in the other direction.

From where he was watching, Harv was frozen, not quite understand what he'd just heard. A cold sort of fear snaked through him—had he been wrong? When Finnily had said, then, a week ago—could he have misinterpreted it?

Probably.

It had been so dumb of him! He felt the need to tear out his hair, to hit his forehead against tree, maybe bury his head in the dirt under this bush and never come back out. He was such an idiot!

She was never going to like him back, ever, was she?

He just had to accept it.

_He's sitting in the middle of the dream plane. It's the only reason he knows it's a dream, because of the setting: the smooth ground, like the softest velvet, that bleeds off in the distance to navy blue sky._

_He's alone._

_Harv notices, for the fist time, that the ground is made of rock; it's black, but when he tilts his head, he can see green in it. Green-black. In places, it's blue-black and in others, it's purple-black. Interesting. He's never seen it like this before._

_In fact, he's never taken note of the ground before. _

_He picks up a pebble and twists it between his fingers. It's green. And really pretty. _

_Finnily would like it._

_Finnily. _

_A wave of embarrassment floods him at the thought of her, even in this dreamscape, where he should be safe, away from the affects she has on him. Apparently he's not as safe as he once thought, here._

_A breeze picks up, and the pebble is torn from his fingers. It bounces away, and he cries out, and scrambles after it on all fours; the tiny rock is important. He doesn't know why, but it is. _

_He finds it a little ways away, buried between two bigger rocks that are purple-black. Suddenly, the tiny pebble is the huge diamond which was imbedded in the necklace. It's the same thing, but it's not. Harv picks it up and turns it over; it's got a bluish quality to it. It's really very pretty. Why didn't Finnily accept it? _

_Why did Rhodri try to give it to her, in the first place? _

_He's mad at the jewel, the jewel relates to Rhodri and he's mad at Rhodri. He throws it down and it shatters against the two rocks it had been wedged between; the sharps transform back into the tiny green-black pebble, but now there's thousands of the same one, millions. _

_Harv doesn't know which one he's supposed to be looking at. He starts to panic, gathering them all together in his hands and trying to use his shirt to hold them all. _

_There's too many of them. His shirt rips and the pebbles spill. He yells in frustration and despair. There's a laugh from behind him and he turns, feeling cold, because he knows that laugh._

_It's Finnily, and she's laughing at him. Hah, she says, You fell for it, you thought I was in love with you but I'm not. Ha. Ha ha ha. You're pathetic, Harv. Pathetic. _

_The last word echoes in the dreamscape and Harv screams, yells at her, and is crying, but he doesn't realize it. She's laughing even harder now, like he's just told the world's best joke, all bent over, arms wrapped around her abdomen. _

_Ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. You're hilarious, Harvey, you crack me up._

_No, he screams. No. I hate you. I hate you! _

_But he knows he doesn't, not really.  
><em>

_She probably doesn't even know what she's doing to him. _

_The world's a big joke, life's a game. You don't get it, Harv, do you? You don't, do you? _

_Her laughter isn't pretty anymore. It's harsh and cold. Her hair isn't either. It's not wavy and long, it's not short and straight, clipped at a harsh angle. It's all wrong. She's not Finnily any more. _

_Ha. Ha hahahahahahahaha. Her laughter bleeds together and it's an awful sound. Harv claps his hands over his ears and screams in anger, in frustration and in fear, falls to the ground. Her black boots have blended into the rocks. _

_Hahahahahahahaha. _

She couldn't stand the silence any longer. She could practically hear the birds in the trees and that wasn't right. She shouldn't have been able to hear them on a normal day like this!

_But_, Finnily reminded herself. _It's not the first time_. In fact, it was very far from the first time; this had been going on for nearly two weeks now.

She paused, her steps faltering. Beside her, Harv glanced at her and then quickly looked away. 

Now that she thought about it, two weeks ago is when she'd told Harv that he _had _to become a knight. It had started after that, his strangeness—but it hadn't gotten really bad until about a week ago. He'd been nervous and blushy and oddly smiley during the first week, but then he had all of a sudden become silent, jaw-clenched. Sometimes, Finnily could see the muscles working there.

Was _that _what this was about? He didn't want to marry her or something? That was idiotic. Why wouldn't he? He was her best friend. She couldn't imagine marrying some _stranger_. She'd much rather get married to Harv.

Did he not see it that way?

She brought up her gloved fingers to her mouth and chewed on them; they tasted like leather (_right, gloves're made of leather_) so she quickly gave that up and went to pull at her hair instead. Not the same, but it would do to occupy her jumpy fingers.

She couldn't take his stony, unhappy silence any more! He was mad at her or something! Maybe his parents had gotten him in trouble because of what she'd said. She didn't want that, didn't like that idea.

She'd have to talk to him about it. If she could figure out what she'd done wrong _(she couldn't possibly have done any thing _that _wrong, she was too awesome for that sort of thing, but Harv was like a wild card, and things were different with him)_ then perhaps she could right it.

But—what if he said exactly what she didn't want to hear? She could already hear him speaking the words in a distant tone, his eyes wandering away, boredom covering his face.

"_Sorry, Finn, I don't want to marry you. In fact, I don't even want to be your best friend anymore. I don't want to be your _friend _anymore, either. We shouldn't hang out anymore. I'm going to go back to being friend with Cliff and Trevor and Emet instead…oh, and Hevvin too. Hevvin's my friend now." _

She grasped at her mouth to prevent herself from making any sort of indignant sound. Her gloved fingers dug at the corners of her mouth, which were rapidly turning downwards into a frown.

He couldn't do that do her! Couldn't! They were BFFs. They had to stick together. But then why would he—

She had to ask him about it, she had to talk to him she had to _know it was killing her just going on like this_. But she was afraid to.

(By internally freaking out like this, she was missing the slightly worried look Harv was shooting her way every now and again.)

She shouldn't have said anything, that day. She should have just let it. But it had seemed like such a good idea then, a brilliant one, in fact! But now it had backfired; that wasn't how it was supposed to go, not at all.

Fine. She was going to talk to him about it, right then, right at that very second. She wrapped her arms around herself and stopped her feet; once Harv stopped as well, a moment later and a step ahead of her, she turned what she hoped was a blank face to him.

"Harv—"

His eyes grew round, and before she was able to process what he was doing, he'd tackled her to the ground and was up again, his back to her, brandishing his short sword at Hevvin.

Her mouth fell open at the sight of the unicorn because _when did he get there_ but wasn't able to do much else. She could still feel the heat of Harv's hands on her upper arms, where he'd grabbed her and brought her down in order to avoid being bowled over by the unicorn.

Her stomach clenched as the sound of Hevvin's horn grating at Harv's sword hit the air; what an awful noise.

Hevvin seemed to agree, because he reared back; an expression like pain graced his features, if that was even possible. As Finnily and Harv watched, the unicorn staggered backwards into a bush and morphed quickly into a human.

"OW!" he yelled indignantly at Harv. "That's important, you know!"

"I wouldn't have had to pull my sword at you if you hadn't been trying to kill Finn again—"

But Hevvin didn't seem to be listening; he'd suddenly reappeared behind Harv and was gripping him around the neck, his face twisted—no longer in pain, but this time in anger.

Finnily cowered into the dirt path as Hevvin continued to cut off Harv's air. At first, Harv twisted and fought, trying to get his elbow into the unicorn's gut or unmentionables, then tried to get at him with his sword; but then the sword fell from Harv's limp fingers, and fear lit at Finnily like fire.

"Stop it!" she shrieked, pulling herself up and flinging her small body at the unicorn. "Stop it!" This time, she punctuated the words with fists to the unicorn's back. He seemed to notice her and dropped Harv; the boy stood wobbly for a moment before flopping down.

"What?" hissed Hevvin. "He hurt me! He scraped my horn!"

"I don't care!" she snapped, trying to dodge around him to get to Harv. The unicorn did a little dance with her, staying in front of her and not letting her around. "Go away!"

The last two words were spoken harshly, a yell, and they made the unicorn freeze for whatever reason. A sort of sadness lit into his eyes, and he frowned.

"You don't—" 

And then he crumpled to the ground, stars in his eyes. Finnly jumped away from the now unconscious mythical beast as he shifted back to a unicorn in his sleeping state; confused, she looked up and found that Harv had hit Hevvin on the back of the head with the hilt of his sword.

There was awkward moment in which the two of them just sort of stared at each other. Then Harv sheathed his sword, made a sort of jerky nod as though motioning for Finnily to follow him, and continued down the path.

With one last fearful glance at the unicorn that lay crumbled in the middle of the path, Finny tore down dirt trail and caught up with Harv. There was only the sound of their crunching footsteps until the trees broke and they were walking with fields on either side of them. The path always grew wider so they didn't have to stand with their shoulders so close, and Harv drifted off to one side, but didn't stray from the path.

Finnily frowned.

"…you were saying?" Harv asked her weakly after what seemed to be forever. But the girl had lost her resolve. She wilted in on herself.

"Never mind," she mumbled.

"Okay," she demanded two days later. She had Harv caught in his father's forge. "What is up with you?"

It was now or never, she supposed.

Harv looked over his shoulder at her. Was it her imagination, or had some little light been squished out of his blue eyes the moment they caught hers? Harv replied in a cautious way, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you do!" she all but screamed at him, her arms flying outwards. "You've been acting so strangely lately!"

This must have been the wrong thing to say. He seemed angry now, although Finnily couldn't fathom why. He dropped his shoulder plates—he'd been holding them in his gloved hands, working at the fire; fixing them or something, Finnily supposed. She'd found him there, toiling away _(shirtless) _and had made her decision to block the door with her small frame and confront him.

They clattered to the ground and suddenly Harv was in her face. He radiated heat, probably from having been so close to the fire like that, but Finnily felt her face flush all the same. She nearly forgot her previous anger until he spoke.

"I've been acting weird? _I've _been acting weird?" He seethed, fists clenching, and Finn tried to make herself smaller. "You're the one who was spouting nonsense!"

"Nonsense? Since _when_? I've always spoken my mind and—"

He glared at her, hard, but back away a couple steps; the glare slipped from his features and his face fell, arms folding self-consciously around himself for a brief second. Finnily faltered in the middle of her ranting.

"Can you explain to me—" he seemed to take a gulp of air, as if to gather himself for what he was about to say, as if he wanted to mentally prepare himself for his next movement and he didn't know what sort of consequences it could rain down upon him.

Finnily waited uncertainly.

He repeated his words, this time much softer and more steady; she had to lean forward to catch half of them. "Look, can you explain to me why you made that comment? About marriage?"

So that _was _what he'd been on about. Confused, Finnily blinked and said, "Well, because I figured we'd get married someday," she stated bluntly. Her eyebrows creased. "What's wrong with figuring you'll marry your best friend? I'd much rather marry you than some stranger—"

Harv's expression had gone carefully blank while she blabbered. Nervously, she cut herself off.

"But you don't love me." It was a statement.

Her face flushed. "You don't—"

"I do know," He broke in; his voice got louder on the second word, and then sounded strained, as though he were trying not to shout at her. "I _know_. And anyway, you can't make decisions like that without _telling _me—"

"I did tell you!" She cried. She knew where this was going, oh _god_.

He continued as though she hadn't spoken. "—and you can't play with people's emotions like that, Finnily."

She bit her lips, tears already pressing at the backs of her eyes; she squeezed them shut to block out the sight of Harv. He was going to say it next; she knew it—the rejection was coming. She didn't want to hear it.

Her eyes flew wide again. Harv's expression had broken and was someplace between hurt and discomfort; his eyes were slanted with worry as he eyed her. Worried about how she'd react, then.

His mouth opened, but she shook her head furiously. She pressed the heel of her hand at her mouth (because she'd already let out something that nearly sounding like a sob, damn it!), before turning and fleeing.

There was a long beat of silence in which Harv could only hear the sound of her foot pounding away from his house, before he turned back to his shoulder plates. Girls. He'd never understand them. He was sort of really glad, at that moment, that he didn't have a sister.


	3. Chapter 3

It had been two and a half weeks, and Harv had seen Finnily all of twice and spoken to her all of once—not even once. It had only been half of a conversation. If such a thing existed, that run in with Finnily had been it.

It was a couple minutes after he'd escaped Warrior U; he had walked to school that morning because his mother had needed the horse for one reason or another, so he supposed he had to walk back. Not before he stopped at the teeny café and had a nice tall glace of ice water, though; the server was always kind, always giving out cold water on hot days as though she didn't want to see the warriors-to-be suffering. Harv was eternally grateful for it.

He sat at an outdoor table, facing the street and sipping his water. He had to write another paper, _joy_, and without Finn's held, he was in trouble. He was just considering running and catching Trevor to see if the mountainous boy could offer him any assistance when he'd casually glanced down the road and caught sight of _her. _

Or rather, _her _and her mother, walking down the street as though they owned the place (which, Harv reflected, they practically did) and he'd jumped up, knocking down his glass with a clatter. Finnly tossed over a casual glance, locked eyes with Harv and froze.

She turned slowly around back the way she came and took two deliberate steps.

"Finnily!" he yelled after an incredibly frustrating moment in which his throat wouldn't work. He vaulted over a chair and dashed across the road. "Wait—"

She ignored him, continuing stiffly the other way. Her mom had conveniently disappeared from sight.

He grabbed her upper arm, jerking her back to face him. "I—"

"What do you want, _Harv_?" She snapped out his name between clenched teeth. "I don't have time."

"Finn, whatever I said last week that upset you—"

Something flared in her eyes and when she yanked her arm away from him, Harv let her go. (Stupid, stupid he should have gone after her again damn it!)

Yes, though, when he thought back, that had to qualify as a half-conversation, or even less. A quarter? Really, it had only been about three sentences long in total. How long did a back and forth have to be before it was a conversation?

Anyway, the paper was due tomorrow and he didn't have a single thing written. But Finn was mad at him—he just had to let it run its course. Like last time she'd been mad at him and had been kidnapped by a certain psycho unicorn in human form while shopping—

He was worried about her; he really did not want a repeat of that episode. If she got in trouble and he wasn't there—

But, then again, she _had _survived fourteen years without him, hadn't she?

_Yeah, _said a part of his mind bitterly. _With a hole through her stomach. And by staying indoors playing the harp and singing. _

In short, he was miserable with worry and his grade was dropping, in classes, and would only go down further if Finnily stayed mad at him. It was idiotic, how much effect she had on his mood; Harv hated it, right now, that she could have this effect on him—still—after not speaking to her properly for nearly a month.

He just wanted things to go back to normal, damn it, but what _was _normal, now, anyway?

He'd tried calling her, he'd tried sending messages through Emet and through Rhodri and through to her mother. He'd even been desperate enough to try and get Hevvin to deliver his apology to her! But nothing was working. Her mother was mad at him, so when he'd showed up at their house—twice—she'd immediately kicked him away, hadn't even allowed him to step through the front door. It was almost as though she had orders not to hurt him, though—the memories of what she'd done to him before and what she'd done to others were fresh in his mind.

If any of his three brothers had noticed his change in mood, none mentioned it. Harv had caught his mom giving him worried looks, lips pressed thin, but she never said anything about it to him and he never approached the topic himself; his dad seemed to be the last to catch on, but he was the first to do anything about it.

His dad found him sitting out with the goats, stroking the oldest one on the top of its grey head. Roland settled down beside his oldest son with a grunt—"These bones just aren't what they used to be, Harvey"—and there was silence for a long drawn out minute.

Then Roland cleared his throat; "Ah, son…are you alright?"

Startled, Harv glanced up to his dad. "Yeah, fine," he said slowly.

Roland gave him a long, hard look. Harv frowned up at his father. "I think that's a lie," Declared the man, settling backwards and crossing his arms. Harv managed a snort to cover up his the unhappy expression that graced his features.

Why did dads have to know absolutely everything all the time? It wasn't fair. He wondered what it'd be like to gain that power himself, when he had his own children.

"Really," a large, calloused hand patted Harv gently on his shoulder. "You can talk to me, son."

Harv leaned his head backwards, against the wooden post of the fence and watched the clouds; his fingers made absent patterns around the goat's ears, and eventually the goat made a complaining bleat and wandered off. Eventually he gave a tired sigh. "It's Finn."

"The girl you hang out with?" 

Harv made a face. "We…got into a fight," he said it hesitantly, because he didn't know if '_fight_' was the right word or not. Fighting usually entailed anger on both sides, and swords—or like, in his fight with Emet, lots of rolling around and punching. None of that had gone down with Finn.

Roland was silent, waiting for Harv to continue on his own time. Eventually, Harv spilled the entire story haltingly, starting from the cloud-watching day which had gone wrong. By the end of it, Roland's eyebrows had climbed all the way upwards and had become rather smitten with his hairline.

"Quite the girl," He stated then, nodding to himself and unfolding his arms so that he could absently pat a passing goat on the back. "Well, do you plan on still becoming a knight like your dear old dad?"

Harv nodded.

"And do you plan on marrying her?"

Harv spluttered. "Well—I—that's—we—"

Roland took this as a yes, chuckling and patting Harv on the head. "At least now I know why you were acting so strange that first week you knew her," he said. "You were in love!"

"Was not!" yelped Harv. He hadn't fallen in love with her _immediately_, why did his dad talk like that? But all that Roland did was laugh again, as though Harv's entire situation was incredibly humorous. "Dad!"

"Could have been worse," he said as he stood, grunting. "Now go and do your chores, or Rhodri's going to get to them." Like it was a threat.

Instead of going off immediately, Harv waited until his father reached the well before burying his red-glowing face into his hands.

It was by luck that he caught up with her, just the day after that awfully awkward conversation with his dad.

Something told him this was his last chance to find out what on earth—out of everything he'd said that day—got to her so badly, to find out if he could fix it.

(Their roles were reversed, how ironic, not that Harv knew it. He'd have had to go bang his head against the first brick wall he saw, if he knew.)

Something in the glint of her eyes told him that this was his last chance. He gulped and tightened his fingers around her wrist; she didn't move. She was frozen, staring him down. Both had fallen still in running positions, but it didn't matter. Around them, the forest was next to silent.

Harv opened his mouth to say something intelligent and fitting, but all that came out was a gulping, "—um."

Finnily's expression pinched slightly, but otherwise the girl stayed still, waiting, almost poised to continue the running which had been interrupted by Harv's grabbing of her arm.

"Finnily—"

"—what—"

They started at the same time, and then both fell quickly silent. Harv heard Finnily's teeth clack together. Harv paused then nodded slightly to her, as if telling her to continue.

"What do you want?" She asked.

"To…apologize, for whatever I said that upset you." He narrowed his eyes and loosened his fingers on her wrist slightly, as though trusting that she wasn't about to bolt anymore. "And I think you owe me an apology, too."

She snorted. "For what? I wasn't the one that was trying to end our friendship."

Harv stared blankly, flatly at her and she faltered, just slightly, her face falling just a bit.

"I wasn't trying to end our friendship," said Harv slowly, not quite understanding what she was getting at.

There was silence between them; Harv felt incredibly awkward. Finnily was looking at him in an accusing way, like she couldn't believe that he was denying the truth (but it wasn't the truth!) He bit at his lip and glanced away, then back to Finnily. He tried to plead with her:

"Look, I'm really confused. I don't understand what I did wrong and why it upset you so much, and I don't think you understand why you upset me in the first place. Can you—can you just explain it to me?"

Something in her eyes changed and wavered; she was uncertain about something—what to say next, perhaps? Or how to tell him nicely? Harv wasn't sure if he wanted to know at all.

It wouldn't make a difference, if things took much longer.

Her lips became a thin line. Suddenly, Harv was nervous. It _wouldn't _make a difference, sooner or later, because this was his last chance—he knew it, in the pit of his stomach. He knew that if he didn't get some answer from her and didn't give some, _right then_, it wouldn't matter any more, because Finnily would walk out of his life.

His tightened his grip on her wrist once more. If he let her go, he was afraid he'd never see her again—and at this point, that was the worst possible thing that Harv could even think of.

Finnily didn't speak, and neither did Harv. Long moments passed in which Harv kept his eyes steadily on the ground and Finnily kept her lavender ones on Harv.

"I—" she said finally, causing Harv to jump. He looked up at her, eyebrows creasing with anticipation. She faltered when their eyes met, and licked her lips nervously before looking away. "I really messed up, I guess. I shouldn't have ever said anything, that day—it didn't come out how I meant it to. And then…things just went down hill."

Harv blurted out, "What do you mean?" but she kept him from saying anything further with a steady glare.

"The…last time we spoke," she said softly, muttering it. "I thought you were going to say were couldn't be friends anymore, so I ran away."

Harv gaped at her. Silence mounted for two heartbeats, and then Harv protested, "I was never going to say that!"

She glanced back at him, a look in her eyes like a frightened mouse might have. "You weren't?" she gasped out, and then quickly rearranged her features into anger. "You're just saying that!" Finnily tugged furiously to free her wrist.

"No!" he argued. "I was just trying to tell you that you were playing with my feelings—"

"I don't know how I was doing _that_—"

"—and I was kinda mad but I was never going to say _that_—"

"—you're lying!—"

"—because I like you, Finnily, a lot—!"

"—don't…even…what?" she blinked at him. Harv's face lit up instantly in response. He resisted the urge to look away.

"…which was why I was so upset when I thought you were playing when you…said…suggested…that one day…" he tried to form a coherent sentence.

"…oh," said Finnily.

"Yeah. _Oh_." Harv snorted.

"Oh." Repeated Finnily. Harv wondered what she was getting at.

Her cheeks were dusted pink.

Harv wondered what in the world he'd just done.

"I…didn't know," said Finnily carefully. "I really like you, too, Harv."

"That's not what you said to Rhod—" He cut himself off short.

Finnily's eyes went round. "You saw that?" Her expression clearly stated _'No wonder!'_ and Harv nodded to confirm it, hesitantly. She snorted. "You're an idiot," Finnily told him confidently. "That was a lie."

"—what?"

"Why would I admit to your little brother that I'm in love with you? That's…stupid…" she clapped a hand over her mouth and regarded Harv with eyebrows raised higher then should have been physically possible.

She squeaked from through her fingers. "—that was not how I wanted that to come out!"

Harv grinned shyly and slipped his hand from her wrist to her hand, twining his fingers in his. He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back after a moment."…I think we can work things out," he told her.


End file.
